MacWhisper vs Superwhisper: files or live dictation

MacWhisper and Superwhisper do different jobs. MacWhisper is for transcribing files (podcasts, interviews, lectures, recorded meetings) and costs about EUR 64 once. Superwhisper is for live dictation into any app and costs $249.99 lifetime or $84.99 a year, as of 2026-09-27. Both run Whisper on your Mac. Pick by the job you do most: files, or talking into the app in front of you.

What each app is built for

MacWhisper starts from a file. Drop in a lecture, an interview, a video or a meeting recording, and it gives you a transcript with speakers, timestamps and subtitle export. Its home page lists dictation too, but the app is organised around files and meetings, and it says so in its headline.

Superwhisper starts from a key press. Hold it, talk, and the text lands in Slack, Mail, your editor or a browser field, shaped by a mode (Voice, Message, Email, Note or your own). It also transcribes files and has a meeting assistant, but dictation is the centre.

Under the hood they overlap more than the names suggest. Both run OpenAI’s open Whisper models on the Mac, and both let you swap in other models. Superwhisper’s own FAQ says its offline models only run well on Apple silicon; that holds for local Whisper in general, since the large models are close to 3 GB and need the memory and GPU of an Apple silicon Mac.

So the difference is not the engine. It is the workflow each app is built around: a file you already have, or a sentence you are about to say.

Superwhisper publishes its own comparison page. It is a vendor page, so read it as one.

Side-by-side table (as of 2026-09-27)

From each vendor’s own site, checked 2026-09-27. Superwhisper’s yearly and lifetime prices sit behind a toggle on its site; we read those on 2026-09-26.

Job	MacWhisper	Superwhisper
Main job	Transcribing files and meetings	Live dictation into any app
Paid price	About EUR 64 once (Pro)	$8.49/mo, $84.99/yr or $249.99 lifetime
Free tier	Yes, fewer features	3,000 words of Pro features, then a basic tier
Local models	Yes, Whisper	Yes, Whisper and others
Own API keys	Pro: OpenAI, Anthropic, Groq, Deepgram, ElevenLabs and more	Pro: “Use your own AI API Keys”
Subtitles (SRT, VTT)	Yes	Not its focus
Speaker detection	Yes	Not listed
Modes per app	App-specific prompts	Modes, auto-switch by app, Super Mode reads the screen
Meetings	Yes, no bot joins the call	Yes, meeting assistant
Platforms	Mac	Mac, Windows, iOS, Android

Where MacWhisper wins

• Long recordings. Batch several files, get speakers and timestamps, export subtitles. That is the job it was built for.
• Price for a file workflow. About EUR 64 once, against $249.99 for Superwhisper’s lifetime licence.
• Provider choice for the text step. Its Pro tier takes keys for a long list of providers, plus Ollama and LM Studio on your Mac.
• Summaries and chat over a transcript. Useful after an interview or a lecture.

If most of your audio already exists as a file, MacWhisper is the better tool, and paying for a dictation-first app to do it is paying for the wrong thing.

Where Superwhisper wins

• Dictation into any app. Modes shape the output for the app you are in, and it can read the screen for context.
• Every platform. One licence covers “as many of your devices as you like”, on Mac, Windows, iOS and Android. MacWhisper is Mac only.
• Choice of language model. GPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Llama and Ministral models for the rewrite step.
• Teams. An Enterprise plan with SOC 2 Type II, which matters if your company buys software that way.

If you talk to your computer all day, Superwhisper is the one built for that.

If you want both jobs in one app

Plenty of people need both: dictation all day, and a recorded call or voice memo to transcribe now and then. Two options:

1. Superwhisper alone. It does files too, just with less depth than MacWhisper on subtitles and speakers.
2. Nota. Live dictation is the main job, and a Transcribe page takes audio and video files (WAV, MP3, M4A, FLAC, OGG, OPUS, MP4, MOV and more). The text of each file lands in History like a dictation. Long pauses are trimmed before transcription, and local models take long files with no size limit (OpenAI’s cloud endpoint stops at 25 MB, about 13 minutes). It costs $79 once for 1 Mac ($59 early bird) after 5,000 free words. Its Notebook records microphone and optional call audio, keeps the transcript, and generates notes with your configured AI. It has no speaker labels or subtitle export and is Mac only. If speaker labels or subtitles matter, MacWhisper plus a dictation app is the better pair.

File transcription in Nota is covered in the Transcribe docs, and modes in the modes docs.